1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a combination document cover and holder for protecting a document while suspending it from a support.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various types of document holders have been devised for suspending publications, such as magazines, catalogues, newspapers, tabloids, reports, booklets, and other soft covered publications and other documents from supports. Such soft covered documents are often suspended from supports, rather than supported from beneath, due to the lack of any inherent sturdiness in the structure of documents of this type. That is, for example, if soft covered publications or other documents ace placed upon a shelf or in a file box, they inevitably collapse and fall to the surface upon which the are supported the moment lateral support is removed from either side. Thus, it is quite difficult to maintain a file of such soft covered documents in an orderly array, since such documents, when arranged side by side, immediately collapse laterally if any one of the documents in a file is removed or if an end lateral support is withdrawn.
The lateral collapse of such documents makes it very difficult to locate the proper position for reinsertion of a document into any particular order once a document that has been withdrawn is to be replaced. Similarly, soft covered documents cannot be successfully stored in the pockets of hanging file folders since they collapse and crumple to the bottom of a hanging file unless the hanging file folders are maintained packed closely together to maintain lateral support at all times.
Various types of hangers have been devised for suspending soft covered documents. U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,762 describes a booklet and document filing device by means of which soft covered booklets and other multipage documents can be suspended in a hanging file system. Another such device is sold as the File-Bar catalogue hanger by FileDirect located in Del Mar, Calif. A magazine holder designed for storing magazines in a standard three-ring binder is sold by Newell Office Products Group located in Madison, Wis. However, the prior document hangers which have heretofore been available have failed to provide the documents to be stored with any kind of protection. Consequently, when such conventional devices are utilized to store soft covered multipage documents the outermost pages of such documents are quite likely to become torn or crumpled. This can easily occur when the hanger bearing the document is dropped onto the rails of a hanging file. The outermost pages of the document are quite likely to become snagged and torn or wrinkled by interference from adjacent hangers.